The Tom Barber Trilogy_Volume I_Uncle Stephen, the Retreat, and Young Tom

by Forrest Reid

  Pascoe set his burden carefully down on the grass, glanced at Tom with a shade of anxiety, as if not quite certain of his ground, and after a pause asked; “Are there any fish in the dam?”

  “I don’t know; I didn’t look.”

  Another and more prolonged silence followed, and again it was broken by Pascoe. “What were you in such a bait about? I wouldn’t have said not to bring the dogs if I’d thought you’d mind. I only meant while we were fishing.”

  “I know. It wasn’t that really. At least it wouldn’t have been if he hadn’t been there.”

  “But you were mad with me; and I don’t see what I had done.”

  “You didn’t do anything. I warned you beforehand what would happen: it’s always the same when there’s more than one boy there. He makes them quarrel with each other, and he does it on purpose. I told you he had tried to do it with James-Arthur and me, only he didn’t succeed. If you’d been alone, or I’d been alone, he’d have been quite different.”

  “I don’t like him much,” Pascoe admitted, glancing at the jam-jars.

  “He says he has a rook-rifle,” he pursued slowly, after another interval, “and that shooting is better sport than making an aquarium. . . . He says he’s shot lots of things—birds and rabbits, and a cat. His father gave him the rifle for a birthday present, and thinks there’s no harm in shooting—that all healthy-minded boys like it, and that if they don’t they must be morbid or something. . . . He offered to let me have a try.”

  Tom appeared indifferent. “Are you going to?”

  “No.”

  It sounded decisive, yet the word was hardly out of his mouth before the conscientious Pascoe began to fidget uneasily, evidently fearing more might be attached to it than he had actually meant. “It’s not that I wouldn’t do it,” he said, “or that I think shooting’s wrong, but——”

  “But what?”

  “I thought he thought it would annoy you if I did, and that that was really why he offered to let me.”

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  AWAKENING in the early morning, Tom had heard the sound of distant drums, but in a minute or two he had dropped off to sleep again, and it was quiet when he awoke once more and this time definitely. Breakfast, he knew, would be earlier than usual, because of the general holiday. It was strange how everything felt so differently on different days. There was a Saturday afternoon feeling, a Sunday feeling, a Monday morning feeling, and there was certainly a twelfth of July feeling. While he was dressing he again caught the far-off beating of drums. William would be walking, and meals would be informal and picnicky, because Phemie and Mary would be getting most of the day off. In the early afternoon Pascoe was to come over, and he and Tom were going to the field to watch the procession. Daddy and Mother might be going too, and there would be speeches—Max’s father, who was a great Orangeman, would be making a speech: the field chosen for this year’s meeting was only about a mile from the Rectory.

  After breakfast he filled a pocket with cherries and went down to the hollow oak to give Edward the squirrel a twelfth of July treat. The whole countryside was deserted, for, except those whom domestic duties confined to the house, and the very smallest of the children, the entire village, dressed in its Sunday clothes, had gone into town holiday-making, though most of them would return in the afternoon in the wake of the great procession.

  Tom crossed the meadow and stood beneath the oak. “Edward!” he called, and from the gnarled upper branches a sharp little face with cocked ears and bright eyes peeped down, just to make sure it was the right person. Then Edward descended, leaping swiftly and lightly from branch to branch till he was on a level with Tom’s head, when he paused, waiting to see what had been brought to him.

  Tom produced a cherry, and Edward, sitting up alertly, took it in his hands. But being rather greedy, and having caught a glimpse of the store from which this was only a sample, he nibbled it hastily and threw it down half finished. “Here!” said Tom; “that won’t do. If you’re going to be so wasteful I’ll eat them myself.” As an example, he lifted the rejected cherry and finished it slowly, while Edward watched him and presumably felt ashamed. After that, they divided the remainder between them, though Edward got very much the lion’s share, Tom only eating one now and again to keep him company. There were a few nuts to wind up with, but these Edward carried off one by one to his secret store-room. Finally he perched on Tom’s shoulder and allowed himself to be scratched and stroked, till the sound of a voice hallooing from a distance made him spring back into the tree like lightning.

  The voice was Pascoe’s, and Tom answered with a shrill whistle. Pascoe, still invisible, could be heard scrambling up the bank of the glen, and next moment Roger, who must have picked him up somewhere, burst into the open. Pascoe was not so quick, but very soon he also emerged, waving a small flag, and with an orange lily in his buttonhole. “What are you doing? I’ve been hunting for you all over the place.”

  “I was feeding Edward,” Tom replied. “You told me you weren’t coming till the afternoon.”

  “I know, and I didn’t intend to; but Mother thought if I was riding over I’d better start while the road was clear. . . . Who’s Edward?”

  “He’s a squirrel, and lives in this tree: but you’ve frightened him and now he’s hiding. He’d soon come down, all the same, if Roger wasn’t there.”

  Pascoe gazed up through the branches. “What were you giving him?”

  “Cherries. . . . Nuts too; but he puts those away. He’s got a storehouse where he keeps acorns and beech-nuts and things like that for the winter. . . . I made a storehouse myself—to keep biscuits in—under a tree in the glen; but Barker and Pincher found it and ate the biscuits, though they were in a tin box. I suppose the lid must have come loose.”

  “You blame everything on Barker and Pincher,” Pascoe said. “How do you know it wasn’t Roger? He’s with you far more than they are.”

  “Yes, but he wouldn’t; he’s got a frightfully sensitive conscience and that makes him different from the others.”

  Pascoe turned a somewhat sceptical eye on Roger. “He wouldn’t know it was your storehouse. . . . How could he? And if he didn’t, I don’t see where the conscience comes in.”

  “He would know. As a matter of fact they all knew; because they were with me when I made it. And Barker and Pincher went straight back that very afternoon and dug out the things and ate them.”

  “But you didn’t see them do it,” Pascoe argued, “you’re only guessing.”

  “I didn’t actually see them,” Tom admitted; “I never said I saw them. But who else would do it?”

  “Roger.”

  Tom gave a shrug of impatience. “Haven’t I just told you Roger wouldn’t—because of his conscience.”

  Pascoe pointed out that because Tom told him a thing didn’t necessarily make it true. “If you’re so sure about it,” he went on, “you must have seen him some time when he had done something he shouldn’t. Therefore his conscience can’t always keep him from doing things.”

  “Oh, there’s no use talking to you.”

  “Not if you can’t talk reasonably. To hear you, you’d think Roger was perfect—a kind of angel.”

  This was a new idea, and struck by it, Tom did not reply. He, too, surveyed the dog with a conscience, who finding himself the centre of so much attention, wagged his tail and planted his forepaws against his friend’s shoulders. “An angel could take any form he wanted to,” Tom murmured dreamily. “Roger might be an angel without anybody knowing—a guardian angel. . . . So might Ralph.”

  He awoke to find Pascoe’s gaze—remorseless as an arc-lamp—fixed searchingly upon him. “Who’s Ralph?” Pascoe demanded.

  “Nobody,” Tom answered. . . . “Just a name I saw.”

  But Pascoe was not satisfied. “If he’s just a name it’s queer you should have mentioned him! I suppose you mean you don’t want to tell me. Is he somebody you’re not allowed to know?”

  This was so very
likely to be true that Tom couldn’t help laughing, though he stopped at once when Pascoe began to look offended. “I would tell you about him, only I know you wouldn’t believe.”

  Pascoe said no more, but there was a cloud on his brow which showed what he thought. Tom, for that matter, disliked reservations and secrecy himself, only he was quite sure Pascoe wouldn’t believe. He might be credulous where burglars were concerned, but that was different. Burglars belonged definitely to this world—were very much solid flesh and blood, whereas——. On the other hand, he didn’t want to seem distrustful and uncommunicative, so he compromised by telling the beginning of the story, without mentioning his adventure at Granny’s and its sequel. “Ralph is Ralph Seaford. . . . He died when he was a boy, and there’s a stained-glass window put up in memory of him in the church. That’s how I know his name. His people used to live in Granny’s house—Tramore—but they’re all dead.”

  To his great relief he saw that his words suggested nothing to Pascoe beyond their literal meaning. Indeed, Pascoe seemed disappointed. “I don’t see why you couldn’t have said so at once, then,” he grumbled, “instead of making a mystery about it. As it happens, people when they die don’t become angels. Angels are quite different; they’ve never been human. So if the window has a picture of an angel, it only means that they hope this boy has gone to heaven.”

  He paused for a moment, and then pursued cynically. “Everybody when they die is supposed by their relations to go to heaven. . . . If you were to judge by all the stuff you read on tombstones you’d think the other place didn’t exist.”

  For Tom it didn’t, or rather it didn’t interest him, his conception of it being so narrowly cut and dried as to discourage all imaginative speculation, whereas heaven was simply crammed with possibilities. “Do you think there’ll be animals there?” he asked, and to his surprise Pascoe, who rarely laughed, gave an odd little chuckle.

  “In heaven? Since Roger came from there, I suppose he’ll go back again. . . . Which means,” he went on, “that you’ll have to be jolly careful if you want to be with him instead of with Barker and Pincher.”

  It was the first joke Tom had ever known him to make, but, though he thought it quite a good one, he pursued his own fancy. “Mother does. . . . She thinks there will be animals for people who wouldn’t be happy without them. And the sea will be there for the same reason—for people who are fond of it. . . . Stop!”

  The last word was really a cry of alarm, called forth because Pascoe, with the end of a branch, had suddenly begun to poke among the withered leaves gathered in a hole, and Tom knew what else was there. But his warning came too late. Like the imprisoned jinn in the Arabian Nights story, a cloud of bees seemed literally to flow out, and next moment the air was filled with their angry buzzing. It was no time for hesitation, and Tom and Pascoe took to their heels. Down into the glen they plunged, down the bank and across the stream. Up the other bank—tripping, slipping, and stumbling—trying to beat off their savage assailants, and above all to shield their faces—while Roger barked and raced on ahead. It was not on him, it was on the two boys, that punishment was falling. Utterly reckless of their own lives so long as they could plant a sting somewhere in the enemy, the bees pursued them to the very hall door, and even as Tom slammed it behind him he could see a bee crawling in Pascoe’s hair, and feel one or two who must have got down his own back and beneath his shirt. “Come on!” he cried. “We’ll have to take off all our clothes. I’m stung in about sixty different places, and there are some still walking about, I can feel them.”

  Nor had he greatly exaggerated. Up in his bedroom, when they had pulled off their shirts and turned them inside out, they found several bees still alive Now that the attack was over, Tom began to laugh, but Pascoe seemed not far from weeping, for though both were about equally stung the effect upon him had been much more severe. Upon Tom it had been no more than the stabbing of a number of little red-hot needles; the pain, though sharp, was superficial. Pascoe, on the contrary, where the stings had entered was already beginning to swell up in surprising little lumps, so that Tom, alarmed by the spectacle presented, opened the door and shouted for Mother.

  “Wait!—wait!” Pascoe cried irritably. “Wait, can’t you, till I get on my trousers!”

  “Wait!” Tom echoed, for Mother was by now half-way upstairs. She must have heard the clamour in the hall, and from broken phrases and exclamations have guessed what had happened. Holding the door very slightly ajar, Tom kept her outside on the landing while he explained the situation. “Have you got them on yet?” he called back over his shoulder, and a muffled affirmative being returned, Mother was then permitted to enter and administer first aid.

  Pascoe, trousered indeed, but otherwise unclothed, lay face downward on the bed, and there was no doubt he was pretty badly stung. Having done all she could, Mother finally suggested that he might like to go home—a remark which, more than any of the remedies she had brought with her, had an excellent effect both as stimulant and restorative. Pascoe didn’t want to go home. He very rightly didn’t see what good missing all the fun was going to do his stings, so Mother hastened to reassure him. It was only that she thought he must be feeling very sore and uncomfortable, in spite of the splendid way he had taken it—making so little fuss, when most people would have been moaning and groaning.

  “He’s like the Spartan boy and the fox,” Tom put in, paying his tribute, and these timely blandishments clearly brought their measure of consolation.

  Lunch revived the Spartan boy still further, for, as Tom had expected, he proved to be exactly the kind of boy Daddy liked, and the appreciation was mutual. The meal concluded, they waited till Mother was ready, and then all four set out to walk to the field. Daddy had suggested driving, but Mother had thought not, as there was bound to be a crowd, quite apart from the procession. “Poor creatures!” she sympathized, “beating those big drums and carrying enormous banners on a day like this! They’ll be utterly exhausted, and the field will be like a fiery furnace, with not even a tree to give the slightest shade!”

  “The greater the discomfort the greater the glory,” Daddy reminded her. “Also, a certain amount of refreshment, I imagine, will be produced from hip-pockets.”

  This, so far as Mother was concerned, was an unfortunate suggestion. “I hope not,” she murmured doubtfully. “I’m relying on what Mr. Sabine said—that every year sees an improvement in that direction.”

  More by good luck than calculation, they had timed their departure accurately, for the shrill sound of fifes, soaring above the deep roll and pounding of drums, was already audible in the distance when they emerged on to the main road. Mother and Daddy hurried on, in order to reach the field before the procession, while Tom and Pascoe, who wished to watch it passing, climbed on to a bank.

  And here it was—the first banners swinging and dipping round the bend of the road, brilliantly purple and orange in the sunlight. At the same moment the leading band, which had been marking time by heavy drum-beats, suddenly burst into its own particular tune, and Tom, carried away on the wings of the infectious rhythm, raised his voice in song:

  Sit down, my pink and be content,

  For the cows are in the clover.

  They were the words he had learned from James-Arthur, and whether right or wrong they fitted into the tune; but Pascoe, less excited, nudged him violently in the ribs to show him he was attracting attention. All the same, it was exciting—each band playing its special tune, which, as the players drew closer, disentangled itself from all the other tunes, till it became for a minute or two the only one, and then, passing on into the distance, was itself lost in the next and the next and the next—a constant succession. The big drums, crowned with bunches of orange lilies, were splotched and stained with blood from the hands of the drummers, whose crimson faces streamed with sweat. . . . It was great! Flags waved; musical instruments gleamed and glittered; the drums pounded; the fifes screamed! Yet in the midst of all this strident Dionys
iac din and colour, the men and boys carrying the great square banners, or simply marching in time to the music, looked extraordinarily grave. It was only the accompanying rag tag and bobtail who exhibited signs of levity, bandied humorous remarks, and threw orange-skins—the actual performers were rapt in the parts they were playing in a glorious demonstration, which, if secular, had nevertheless all the bellicose zeal and earnestness of a declaration of faith. The very pictures on the banners were symbols of that faith. “The Secret of England’s Greatness”—in other words, Queen Victoria presenting Bibles to kneeling blackamoors, passionately grateful to receive them—was a subject second in popularity only to King William himself. It told a story, it expressed an ideal—or if not an ideal at any rate an immovable conviction. . . . And there, marching along and helping to carry a banner, was the other, the more familiar William, yet not quite the William of every day. Tom screamed his name at the top of his voice, but William, who must have heard, took no notice.